With the evolution and migration of Internet and related informational services to mobile and/or wireless handsets, devices and so on, telecommunications network operators are constantly seeking enhanced ways of rating for their respective data services. The prior art demonstrates considerable limitations, weaknesses and infirmities in this regard.
Consider U.S. Patent Application 20010055291 by Schweitzer, entitled System, method and computer program product for charging for competitive IP-over-wireless service, which details a means for charging Internet Protocol (IP) traffic but no substantial means for differentiating the traffic therein. Similarly, European Patent Application (EP) 1026853 by Yamaguchi et al., entitled Charging Method for Information Communication Network, teaches of art directed at merely counting the number of packets exchanged and nothing again of rating the different types of packets therein according to their pre-established utility and/or value.
Additionally, art which does address the problem of classifying IP traffic remains insufficient or lacks the sophistication of that of present. As with U.S. Patent Application 20020152321 by Le et al., entitled Method and apparatus for classifying IP data, makes reference to classifying said IP packets based only on IP header fields—basically Layer two (2) of the OSI stack (said stack has seven (7) layers). Our method disclosed goes well beyond Layer two (2) and involves classifying packets based on information obtained from Layer two (2) through to Layer seven (7). (For example, Multi-Media Service (MMS) classification performed by the disclosed invention depends on information obtained from layer six (6) and layer seven (7)). Our classification methodology incorporates correlation of data within the seven (7) layers to classify a packet. And similarly, U.S. Patent Application 20020103925 by Sheth et al., entitled Generic programmable internet protocol classification technique for a broadband engine, concentrates on IP classification specifically at the IPv4 header (i.e. layer 2/3). The art thereof is primarily directed at classification for more or less quality of service (QoS) reasons (indeed, the same can be said of the art identified former) and providing differentiated services. Our art is directed primarily at classification for the purpose of packet and application level data type identification(s).